On organizations, fear, leadership, and the loss of human presence
Part 2 of my conversation with Vern Ho on Life, Leadership, and the Courage to Be Human
As our conversation continued, Vern began speaking less about his illness directly and more about the deeper patterns he believed were affecting organizations, communities, and society itself.
Again and again, he returned to the same central insight:
When human beings ignore pain, suppress intuition, and lose touch with what is real, systems begin to break down.
For Vern, cancer was not merely a medical condition. It became a metaphor for what happens in organizations and societies that stop listening to themselves.
What struck me most, listening back to this conversation nearly thirty years later, is how contemporary his reflections feel. Long before conversations about burnout, institutional distrust, performative communication, or social fragmentation became widespread, Vern was already describing many of the same dynamics.
But unlike many critiques of society, his reflections were never merely cynical. He continually returned to responsibility, courage, congruence, and the possibility of becoming more human.
What follows is an edited continuation of our October 1995 conversation.
Vern Ho
Before the surgery, for at least a year or more, I felt myself losing focus in my work. I knew something wasn’t right. I either needed to do something different or become much more intentional again.
Oddly enough, this illness refocused me.
One reason is that I began to see the illness symbolically.
If we do not pay attention — whether in our bodies, organizations, communities, or nations — things eventually grow out of control. If we ignore warning signs long enough, the system finally stops us and forces us to pay attention.
That realization became one of the most personal organizational lessons I could ever receive.
It clarified something for me as a consultant:
If I can see an organization moving toward something that will eventually cripple it, then I have a responsibility to help them see it too.
In the end, they may choose not to change. They may continue exactly as they are. But at least they will have been asked to look honestly at where they are heading.
And now, knowing I may not have much time left, I find myself working differently.
I want the people I work with to have something meaningful to build from after I’m gone.
Chuck Craytor
What kind of work are you most focused on right now?
Vern Ho
Mostly organizational design and redesign. But underneath that, the deeper questions are always:
What is this organization really about?
Why does it exist?
What is it becoming?
Recently, I worked with a group that originally wanted help improving meetings. But the more time we spent together, the clearer it became that the meetings themselves were not the real issue.
What they were trying to preserve was an old structure that no longer fit who they were becoming.
They were holding onto a vestige of an older model simply because it was familiar and emotionally significant.
And I remember thinking:
If they continue protecting this structure simply because it has always existed, eventually it will become their cancer.
It will consume energy, slow movement, and keep the organization from becoming what it actually needs to become.
Vern Ho
Everything around us is organic.
People, organizations, communities, even nations — everything is in process. Everything changes.
But I think modern Western culture has become obsessed with control. We create mental systems and structures to convince ourselves that we can manage life completely.
I don’t think most tribal cultures understood life this way.
One of the most influential books for me has been Ishmael, especially the distinction between “takers” and “leavers.” We have become takers. We believe we must dominate and control everything around us.
But there’s another way of living: to understand ourselves as part of a larger process rather than as masters over it.
I think we begin healing when we stop trying to control everything and begin paying attention to what is actually happening around us.
Vern Ho
I recently watched two groups spend months trapped in arguments over procedural rules — specifically around quorum and voting requirements.
They became so attached to the structure that eventually they could no longer make meaningful decisions at all.
And I thought:
This is what we do constantly.
We create systems that eventually prevent life itself from moving.
Meanwhile, nature does not operate this way.
Life adapts.
Life responds.
Life moves.
But we become trapped inside our own abstractions.
Chuck Craytor
How do you bring these ideas into practical life?
I think about someone I recently met at a retreat. She works for Delta Airlines. She hates the work, hates the politics, feels drained by it, but plans to stay because retirement is only a few years away.
Vern Ho
That’s the absurdity.
If she truly understood what her life was asking of her, she would leave.
But we postpone our lives. We tell ourselves:
“I’ll deal with it later.”
“I’ll finally live after retirement.”
“I’ll make the change someday.”
And meanwhile, our bodies, spirits, and relationships keep trying to speak to us.
But we override them.
We have created a culture where intuition is distrusted and conformity is rewarded.
So instead of acting when something first feels wrong, we wait until crisis arrives:
a collapse,
an illness,
a breakdown,
or death itself.
And even then, many people still try to reconstruct the same life that was already destroying them.
Vern Ho
One of the things that concerns me most is how afraid people have become of being real.
I spent two hours recently in a meeting with community leaders watching people carefully avoid risk, carefully avoid honesty, carefully avoid controversy.
Everyone was trying to say the safe thing.
No one wanted to jeopardize their position.
And sitting there, honestly, it frightened me.
Because these are the people shaping institutions and policies.
Imagine if even one person each day simply said:
“This is where I stand.”
“This is what I believe.”
“This is what I am willing to take responsibility for.”
I think we would see miracles.
Instead, we increasingly reward performance over presence.
People learn communication techniques, leadership language, strategic phrases — but underneath it all, there is often nobody home.
Chuck Craytor
I remember attending a management consortium where it felt like people were throwing communication tools back and forth across the room.
Paraphrasing.
Feedback.
Carefully structured responses.
Everything sounded polished, but something felt missing.
Vern Ho
Because there was no substance.
Only shells.
People hiding behind layers of professional language and protective structures instead of speaking honestly to one another.
And then we wonder why people feel invisible, angry, disconnected, or hopeless.
We have built systems where human beings increasingly disappear behind roles, jargon, policies, and abstractions.
Even in public policy, we no longer talk about people as people. We talk about categories, entities, systems.
At one public hearing, a man stood up and said:
“I live in my car. And now you’re making it illegal for me to live there.”
And it struck me:
In the name of creating a decent society, we were turning a human being into a criminal simply because he had nowhere else to go.
That is the absurdity.
Vern Ho
I think one of the deepest problems in this country is that we have lost touch with work that is real.
We’ve built enormous systems that depend on layers of management, paperwork, procedure, and consumption.
And eventually, those systems become disconnected from actual human life.
Large organizations begin pretending they are socially responsible while simultaneously becoming too large to remain genuinely connected to the people affected by their decisions.
Once systems become large enough, abstraction replaces relationship.
And when relationship disappears, responsibility disappears with it.
Vern Ho
One dream I’ve had is to gather people together — not managers or executives necessarily, but ordinary board members, citizens, people serving in the community — and simply have honest conversations.
No posturing.
No jargon.
No performance.
Just people willing to think deeply together about what kind of communities and institutions we are creating.
Because whether people realize it or not, they are already shaping the future through the choices they make every day.
And maybe that’s where real change begins.
Not with grand systems.
But with human beings becoming more honest,
more awake,
and more willing to live what they already know.
Closing Reflection
Chuck Craytor
Nearly thirty years have passed since this conversation.
At the time, I understood some of what Vern was saying intellectually, but I do not think I fully grasped the depth of what he was trying to communicate. Life had not yet tested me deeply enough.
Listening again now, I hear something different.
I hear a man approaching death with unusual clarity and honesty. I hear someone trying to remain fully human in a culture increasingly organized around speed, abstraction, fear, and performance. I hear someone refusing to separate leadership from conscience, systems from relationships, or work from spirit.
What strikes me most today is not simply Vern’s critique of organizations or society, but his insistence that we become more congruent — more aligned with what we already know and feel to be true.
His questions remain with me still:
How do we stop postponing life?
How do we remain human inside systems that reward disconnection?
How do we live honestly before crisis forces us to?
On the morning Vern died, I awoke suddenly around 5:30 AM and heard the words:
“Go with God.”
Later that day, I learned he had passed away around 5:30 AM.
I have never tried to explain the experience.
I simply continue to listen.
— Chuck Craytor
One Response
Very insightful writing, both looking back to then to Vern’s life lesson and to seeing your growth along your path the way you learned. Thank you Chuck and for holding Vern’s story and interview as prized lesson for all of us.
“Go with God” for you, for me, and for Vern.